Bubble
Sally Curcio’s new body of work,
“Bubble” uses materials such as pins, beads, eyelashes, tennis balls,
shuttlecocks, and make-up application pads to create miniature worlds
rendered in 12” by 12” squares enclosed in a glass bubble.
Her inspiration emerged from disparate
sources: the saccharin and romantic work of Thomas Kinkade and whimsical
content and form of snow globes. A
number of Curcio’s pieces capture the safeness and nostalgia of
Kinkade’s cottages; other pieces have quirky themes that harkens to the
often playful and surprising content of snow globes.
The detail and integrity of the pieces
are startling. Enormous
photographs of the work, that accompany the sculptures, amplify these
qualities. The photographs,
some 40” by 60”, bring the viewer from the panscopic perspective
offered by her sculpture to descending into these worlds as if a
pedestrian.
The innocence of the work invites the
viewer to summon childhood fantasies when imagination enveloped play with
toys and found objects. Curcio’s
work can be nostalgic in that the viewer may recover a familiar, but
perhaps, forgotten feeling that such childhood fascination had stimulated.
In a more political and philosophical tone, the work in “Bubble” speaks to the many meanings of its title: self-containment, speculation, and the ephemeral. Curcio’s sculptures can be viewed as simulacra of imagined ecologies. The glass bubbles enclosing these fantastic worlds suggest their fragility and need for control so they can continue to exist. One can view the array of bubbles as a kind of laboratory, with each bubble an experiment for spawning a different kind of world. The variety of worlds, that “Bubble” offers, advises that many kinds may be possible. The subtext is that there is speculation or uncertainty in committing to any particular version of a world. Indeed, the worlds offered in “Bubble” can also seem retrospective, complete with the naivety of how we have imagined future or possible worlds. In a moment in history when we seem to be on the cusp of abandoning one kind of world and groping to create another, Curcio’s work counsels openness to what may be possible.
